Sak Yant and Invulnerability in Muay Thai – A Constellation of 8 Yant

Sak Yant, My Belief and Muay Thai Invulnerability

There are, to me, significant differences between the invulnerability of those who deflect bullets, and the invulnerability of those who absorb bullets but keep moving forward. The second is scarier. I picture the the Hulk raging forward while bullets bounce off of him, just getting more pissed off from the onslaught (one of my fight nicknames is dahaknoi, which is ‘Little Hulk’ in Thai. That’s cool. But more dangerous, to me, is the creature that comes after you despite the pain and despite the damage.

Invulnerability, the one by definition, is not the one I romanticize. In fact, what I find so frightening and inspiring about the latter kind is that strength comes through in spite of vulnerability. One is capable of harm, whereas the other is impregnable. In the world of Sak Yant, the impregnable, unable to harm, un-damageable effect is the goal. When Yant masters tattoo these sacred symbols and letters onto their subjects, the reality of purpose is that the skin will not break when a knife slashes at it, a bullet is shot, etc. In fact, one would think that the Ajarn would have to do an incantation to remove the magic temporarily in order to ever tattoo the subject again, as the needles would not pierce the skin.

I believe that this greater magical state is possible. But I think it’s very extreme and some hooligan dropping into an Ajarn’s office to get an invulnerability tattoo can’t just walk out with some ink that acts as a shell. There are monks who can accomplish incredible feats – seemingly miraculous – like heating one hand enough to melt snow while the other remains regular body temperature. The powers of the mind are incredible and the degrees of invulnerability are, to my understanding, almost completely mental. With my Sak Yant, I have found myself to be more emotionally, spiritually, mentally invulnerable. The Yant I have on my back at the center is for impenetrability and my trainer Pi Nu teases me because I’ve been cut since receiving the Yant. But here’s the thing: I feel invulnerable. I feel like I’m wearing fucking armor and when I am cut in the ring I don’t bat an eyelid at it. You shoot the monster and it bleeds, but it keeps walking… that shit is scary. It’s maybe the difference between a scratched up Jaeger and a sparkling, new Transformer. I prefer the former.

My Rahu Sangwan – Rahu is a chaotic diety of fate

Sak Yant, Aesthetics and Pain Brings Faith

For many monks and Ajarns who give Sak Yant, the “client” does not choose the tattoo – this is traditional. Arjan Pi Bangkating is more open-minded. I’ve chosen my first three session Yants, on my elbow, my Sangwan Rahu on my chest, and the Tigers and Takroh on my back. I don’t choose the incantations. But I’ve written before that my Yant aren’t decorative. They are aesthetic to a degree, in that I was attracted to them by the power of their design first. Perhaps the images were “speaking to me” but I’m not versed enough in sacred tattooing to be completely severed from the aesthetic appeal. In the end Yants do something, they are devices, much more than they “mean” something. The purpose of each Yant is important to me, and I researched as best I could the general objectives behind each of my sak yants before and then after I got them.

Some time after receiving my last large back tattoo (two tigers and takroh pictured above) I went to see Ajarn Pi for a kind of consultation because I’d been cut perhaps more than ever since my sak yant – the takroh confers invulnerability. I did not expect external “invulnerability” – I take these paths as paths of spiritual learning, not just powers gained. The onslaught of cuts felt like a lesson I was going through though, a lesson, a test in what invulnerability is. Our conversation was in Thai and was much longer, but the short version is that I wasn’t claiming the Yant weren’t “working,” but felt I needed something, an understanding, an approach; he told me that as a Nak Muay the risks are high. I loved this answer from him because it was embracing of my lifestyle. When Thai men make comments about my scars I can usually shut them up by telling them my number of fights. If you’re a race car driver, your number of crashes is going to be proportionate to your time speeding around in a car; whereas a college student with 10 crashes on his ledger would seem like a problem. He also gave me a kata to chant, which I did not have before. Sak Yant are processes. And receiving one begins a process.

After that back tattoo, which took 4 hours and was one of the most intensely painful and transformative experiences I’ve endured, I felt that I was probably not going to get another tattoo (of any kind) for a long time. I wrote in a previous post about receiving Yant that the pain is a catalyst; it also transports you to states of mind and body that are hard to achieve otherwise. You can glimpse shores of realization from the windows of the pain-vehicle that you have to use lots of effort to revisit in a more normal state of being. Because of this kind of experience, Ajarn Pi Bangkating is someone I consider a guide, a teacher. The word Ajarn means “professor” in Thai and these Sak Yant practitioners are called this precisely because they are spiritual instructors through the Darma of their Yant. Ajarn Pi says, “pain brings faith,” and that’s very much how I would qualify my experiences of being tattooed by him and how I’ve grown from them. Knowing that it was going to be some time before I had another tattoo, I also felt that when I did consider getting another Yant, whenever that might be, I’d do so by telling Ajarn, “whatever you think I need,” and having him choose. He’s been remarkably flexible in the Yant he’s done so far for me – the last two times I asked him he’s been shocked by the size and intensity of what I’m asking for, but he always understands. He refers to me as his Nak Muay to some of the folks I’ve witnessed him talking about me with. I am a weird one.

In Arjan Pi’s Chiang Mai home, with his assistant

My Sak Yant Experience – Arjan Pi Calls Me In

This week we’d just arrived in Chiang Mai and I had a two days before my next fight. In the evening I received a text from Ajarn, asking if I was in Chiang Mai. It was sheer providence that I was, in fact I would not have been there if I had not taken an additional fight at the last minute that landed me in the city a few days earlier. He told me to come see him because he wanted to “try something” for invulnerability. This is something he’s never done with me, spontaneously asking me to visit him, and is probably very unusual. We decided I should come in the next morning because I was fighting the day after that. I assumed it would be something like the last time I’d gone to see him, which involved putting clay inscriptions on my forehead and writing Yant letters with a wooden stick on my scalp, then lots of incantations and chanting before sending me off with a new Kata to recite. (A Kata is syllables, which represent words rather than saying the words themselves, and you chant it as a way to charge your Yant.)

When I arrived at Ajarn Pi’s house/office the front door was still locked and I had to call through the gate. Talk about overcoming my limitations – I’m painfully shy about these types of things; I can barely order food for myself at a restaurant if I haven’t already been there a bunch of times. But Ajarn appeared from the back and unlocked the gate and we walked into his work space, where he seated himself on the pillow where he tattoos and went about finishing a video he was watching on his phone. It sounded like a seminar of some kind. When he was finished with that he talked to me for a few minutes about how to make the magic against cuts stronger, noting that I fight bigger opponents very frequently and how this would help in those situations. He mentioned that he had been talking to another master, perhaps someone higher than him, someone he seemed to have great respect for. And he actually took a few photos of the scars on my forehead and sent them them to the sak yant master, as part of an ongoing chat. He pulled out a small plastic box that was separate from the larger one that holds the bulk of his stencils he usually works from. In it were two pieces of paper, one with a kind of elaborate bow-and-arrow design and the other looking just like the Yant I have on my elbow, something Ricky of Muay Tea has told me is the disc of Vishnu. He showed them to me and fitted the arrow one to my right hand. He kept talking about this whole series of Yant, pointing to his hands, then the top of his head, his shins and the back of his knee. I didn’t fully understand, but I mostly understood. Finally he said, “wai mai?” This means something between “do you want this?” and “can you endure this?” I nodded and he started stacking pillows up on my lap to get the right angle on my hands.

For a moment, literally just a fleeting thought, I considered the consequences of having tattoos on my hands. I get enough unwanted and sometimes negative attention for the tattoos I already have in Thailand and they’re mostly able to be covered. Hands are hard to cover without the fact of their being covered seeming notable in itself. Nobody wears tea gloves anymore. But the thought was quickly released because I felt far more strongly this thought: saying no to this present experience because of some possible future experience seemed foolish. I trust Ajarn and being called in and sat down with this explanation felt enormous; the learned-worry about what someone might think about me later felt small. I came in expecting to be chanted over, and instead I was sitting down for several hours of sak yant, an unexpected transformation.

The order went like this: outline of the Yant on my right hand, full Yant on my left hand, then back to fill in the script on my right hand; top of my head, with my hair being parted by Ajarn Pi’s assistant, Wanchai, who was possessed by his Tiger Yant at the first wai kru ceremony we attended; a single line of script on the cap of each shoulder; arrows on each shin; three lines and an addendum on the back of my left knee. A constellation of 8 Yant (you can see a video clip below). I laughed because when Ajarn Pi was about to tattoo my skull he warned me that this spot hurts; yeah, it all hurts. But as Ajarn Pi says, “pain brings faith.” There was something different about this process from my other Yant experiences; on the one hand it was similar in that the pain and the process just keeps going and I don’t have control over that, I can only control my response to it, my internal experience. But in another way these Yant actually feel like a different thing, perhaps because they are a constellation toward a single purpose rather than a single, large piece. They were strategically placed on points of my body. While I was receiving them, I thought about these guys I’ve seen who are covered in Yant. They cease to be tattoos at that point and become a whole system. That’s what this felt like; I wasn’t “getting a tattoo” but submitting myself to a process. And truthfully, my Yant thus far have felt protective – I liken it to wearing armor – whereas these, the two on my hands, feel more offensive… like someone added a mace to each hand.

Looking at them afterward, and for a few days now, I’m struck by how much Yant are a visual cue for meditative points. Like a visual reminder of what kind of being you want to be, and the more you’re reminded of it, the more you think about it and meditate on it, the more you become it. A very strange point about the bow-and-arrow Yant on my right hand is that when I was a kid, maybe aged 10-13, for a couple of years straight I would draw three arrowheads on my middle three fingers on my right hand. Only those fingers, only the right hand, and virtually every day for three years. My mom teased me by calling them my “retractable claws.” I don’t know why I did so other than that I liked it; it felt better to have them there. It is a remarkable coincidence that my right hand yant now has three arrows pointed down those same three fingers. Twenty years later these arrows have returned.

I’ve also had a tendency to try to become more conscious of my hands. For many years I painted my fingernails black, which wasn’t so much part of my awful “Goth phase,” but I remember explaining to Kevin over a game of Chess when we were first courting that I liked having dark nails because it made me more aware of my hands – I could track them in my peripheral vision better. With these Yant on my hands, I have become more aware of how I’ve kind of lost sight of my hands in this way; like my consciousness doesn’t extend fully into them. (Which, I guess it could be argued was always the case if I needed to “keep track” of my own hands when they were in my peripheral vision zone.) Recently I’ve been working with Sifu on bringing my punches online in fights, getting more bodyweight behind them, better accuracy. One of the things that Sifu teaches as a fundamental, core ethic in his system of training is this mental concentration on your hands and getting the confidence to turn them into wrecking balls. You do this by meditating on the belief that your hands are stone and can destroy people. How fucking perfect is this combination of what Sifu has been teaching me about mental confidence in physical repetition and the physical expression of magical powers as tattoos? Putting the power in my hands, through the Yant and the practice, is taking control of my path. We use the poetic expression for controling one’s fate, “taking it into my own hands.” It feels to me that I am finally extending myself into my own hands.

Magic and Belief

Here’s the thing about magic, beliefs, mental versus physical, and my Sak Yant: I’m learning. It’s all a process of learning. My previous Yant have been at my request, and from them I’ve learned an incredible lot. With this constellation, I was called in. Sometimes in training I make a decision to change my style, or work to implement something I’d like to have in my arsenal; and sometimes those changes aren’t selected by me – I have to change or adapt due to necessity: a broken hand, bigger opponents, aesthetic preferences by judges. Some you choose, some choose you. When dealing with something as grand as Sak Yant, I believe you have very little say in the matter. I’m asking for help from powers far bigger than what I can comprehend and I don’t get to pick and choose how they work. I give offerings to Pra Rahu very frequently, the semi-demonic deity tattooed on my chest. He’s the demigod of Fate and Chaos, and from the chaotic changes and unexpected turns in my life I find lessons and growth. When I give him offerings and thank him, I’m thanking him for bringing me opportunity out of the unexpected, out of the chaos. In the same way, I might request a Sak Yant for protection and the purpose might be invulnerability. And when it’s granted, it might not be what I expected. The Takroh on my back was intended to stop cuts on my forehead – that’s quite specific. And I’ve been cut many times since receiving the Yant. I don’t believe it’s “not working,” as I explained above my understanding of invulnerability is more in a philosophical, meta+physical sense. But it’s not an entirely spiritual experience. As much as I believe that the actual, literal, physical invulnerability is an extreme state that I can aspire to but will take a long time to attain, I offer this piece of physical evidence:

In the 32 days from Nov. 2 – Dec. 3, I fought 7 times. (This was an accelerated rate for me, but as some know on average I’ve fought a great deal for 3 and a half years now, about once out of every 11 days, more than any westerner has – it’s my thing, it’s how I like to fight.) Between a few of these fights I was training at the gym and the father of one of the boys asked if I was hurt from all my fights. I said not really and showed him some bruising on my shin that was keeping me from kicking on that side. The swelling was pretty severe, but only because I didn’t treat it proactively enough early on. The dad called his son over to look – one of my clinching partners – and the whole group of boys I train with followed him, creating a little crowd around my swollen and bruised shin. Bank squatted down and poked gently at it, asking if it hurt. I pushed on it hard, moving some of the fluid around and then knocked on it with my knuckles, telling him it didn’t hurt but was just swollen. The boys all gawked and made noises, then Bank stood up and said that I was a cyborg, then went back to his iPhone while saying, “Cyborg Petchrungruang.” Pi Nu says the same thing; he calls me Terminator and a machine fairly regularly. This morning I was back at training sooner than any of the boys return to their training after a fight, getting ready for my next in two days. Pi Nu bragged about me to these two women watching me, saying how strong I am, that I could fight every day. One of the women, who happens to have been born a man (so that makes this statement somewhat more complex) said aloud, “like a man.” Pi Nu corrected her, saying, “no, a man gets hurt in fights; Sylvie never hurt.” I just accept this as part of my process, this matter of ignoring small injuries and never actually suffering big injuries. But in the boys’ reaction to me, and Pi Nu’s assessment of me, there is an actual physical invulnerability going on here. I don’t see it because it’s me, it’s the only reality I know. But from the outside there is a “how the hell does she do it?” sentiment, even among very experienced Thai trainers, one that evokes the power of magic in a concrete, physical sense.

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A 103 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100 fights in 3 years here, my new goal is to fight an impossible 200 times in Thailand, as much as I possibly can, and to continue to write my experience.

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Apologies to my younger readers, this post is laced with profanity. Sometimes profanity has a special power to describe things in ways other words can’t. The plastic stool underneath me is too far out from the actual corner and my body kind of tips backwards as my cornermen lift my legs into their hands and rub icy cold water on my thighs and shins. I try to balance myself on the ropes but it’s more awkward and I reposition my forearms to the tops of my thighs; the cold water is going over my head now, which feels nice because

This article is about the flourishing Muay Thai of Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, becoming the best female fight city in the country and very possibly in the entire world. No other city boasts such a complete native female Thai fight scene: it’s fed by side-bet (gambling) fights in the outlying provinces, stabilized by Sports Schools, hosted at a large number of local stadia (all of which allow women to fight in them) which hold fights every night of the week, and supported by the Thai Muay Siam media coverage. If you are a female Muay Thai fighter, this

Stephan Fox is the General Secretary of the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA) and the Vice-President of the World Muaythai Council (WMC). He is a huge figure in the recognition and development of amateur Muaythai in Thailand, as well as international competition with both the IFMA and WMC. After 20 years of work, the International Olympic Committee has just given provisional recognition for possible inclusion in the Olympics – let me repeat that: 20 years of work for that, and Mr. Fox’s response is, “right on schedule.” above, the full 30 minute interview with Stephan Fox We cover a range of

What follows is not authoritative, it is just the things I’ve gleaned in my nearly 5 years of full time training at my various gyms, and in traveling around and taking privates from some of the best in Thailand. You can get access to my growing Muay Thai library with legends for a suggested pledge of $5. I read a rant on Reddit that, despite its intense language, does open up that some people do get frustrated training in Thailand, finding a lack of instruction and padwork that be repetitive. I do believe there is no better place in the

Alex and Note are standing on opposite corners of the ring, wearing shinguards and gloves, hanging out like they’re about to do anything other than sparring. They’re totally relaxed, laughing, joking. Kru Nu is pacing around and there’s a buzz around the circumference of the ring while the remainder of the boys all takes their positions along the ropes as spectators and Goh – one of the padmen for the kids – is hollering for Chicken Man. Kru Nu squats down with his hands on the top rope, peering under the staircase and out into the chicken farm, the most likely

First off, let me say it: weight, its not that big of a deal. There is a strong caveat to this, which is that it is a definite advantage, but so is height, or knowing the scoring system, or fighting since you were 10, or having a fight on your home turf, and so many other things. So while weight is always a potential advantage, it is just one among many possible advantages. You can beat people who have the weight advantage over you, just like you can with any of those other advantages. I know that in the West

read my guest post articles a Husband’s Point of View A Husband’s Point of View – Consider this a working theory. I’ve written about the uniqueness of Thai style training before, in The Slow Cook vs the Hack, and this article can be seen as something of an extension of that. But as Sylvie’s husband watching her progress through very earnest training and a hell of a lot of fighting, and seeing numerous westerners come through her Thai gyms, I’ve come upon something I think is pretty important. What led me to this is a very particular quality many serious

Below is meant to be a helpful guide, something that I wish I had when I first came to training Thailand. These are just things I’ve noticed in my 4 years of training and fighting here and are not hard and fast rules to follow. If you want to be polite in Thailand gyms, in a culture that is different than your own, these are just a few things to look for. There are of course a wide variety of gym experiences in Thailand, and things that are impolite in a small, family Thai-style gym might very well be common

A lot of us feel that aggression comes with an “on/off” switch, and that we should be able to flick it back and forth based on context. Many of us who are learning Muay Thai struggle with aggression, perhaps because we don’t feel that we are “naturally aggressive,” and it’s frustrating to watch those who are seemingly naturally gifted with aggression succeed in ways that we don’t see in ourselves. But aggression isn’t natural, even if it does seem innate in some more than others. I contend that aggression feels natural to some due to having spent years cultivating it before they

First a Little Bit About Daeng Daeng is one of the most fight-focused trainers I’ve trained with. When I was training at Lanna Muay Thai in Chiang Mai, it was Daeng who invested the most in diagnosing and fixing weaknesses in my fighting. He wasn’t my main trainer, but he’s a very good teacher and has a keen eye for finding how to improve on existing strengths and correct errors. I’d initially gotten a bit stuck with a technically brilliant but lazy and unmotivated trainer – that guy was a great trainer for some, just not for me – and Daeng

Join and Study my Muay Thai Library of Legends This is a full video of a private I took with Arjan Surat, Head Coach of the Thai National Team, and owner of the esteemed (but lesser known to the west) Dejrat Gym in Bangkok. I did a short review of the gym when I interviewed female fighter Kaitlin Young, and it was then that I met Arjan Surat for the first time: an absolutely extraordinary teacher and life-force of Muay Thai. The man is Old School-Old School, telling me that he’s been holding pads longer than I’ve been alive (he’s

The Gendered Experience

There’s a street vendor cart right below my balcony (well, many floors below my balcony, but a direct fall/jump) that sells the most delicious fried chicken. Sometimes I step out and look over the railing to see if they have a good selection and then go pick the pieces I spied, because I love food and the deliciousness of this chicken is just beyond mortal resistance. It used to be a lady and her husband with their chubby daughter running around everywhere, but then the daughter had to go to school and now they seem to have brought in

My interview with Angie this morning: Angie has been training consistently and with dedication at Petchrungruang Gym in Pattaya for about a year and a half now. When she first appeared at the gym we didn’t speak at all; she was only there in the afternoons and came with a friend, who wasn’t really into Muay Thai, so the pair of them kind of peripheral to my awareness. But over time Angie became more serious – she wanted to fight – and her training became more sincere as her friends drifted out of the gym. That’s when Angie and I

Being treated equally isn’t always what it seems. I’ll just come right out and say that I balk when I hear women claim they are treated completely the same as men are at their gyms in Thailand. I find it so hard to believe that I quite frankly don’t believe it. On the one hand, even if treated with kindness and respect on both sides of gender, men and women are rarely treated exactly equal anywhere in the world. I wouldn’t claim this about how I’m treated in my own family or among my friends; and while I do feel

Earlier in the day I had fought on the day reserved for honoring the 18th century Father of Muay Thai, Nai Khanomtom, amid the sacred ruins of the former halcyon capital of Siam, Ayutthaya. I was cut in the fight and bled profusely in late rounds, and the fight came very close to being called off by the ring doctor. As the doctor inspected me, during a timeout forced by the ref for my own good, the fight was held in the balance; with blood streaming down my face, I begged in Thai for the doctor to let me continue: “I

When I came home the other day my husband Kevin was interested in how I would view this promotional video (above), shot to highlight fitness model, Muay Thai practitioner and lifter Aurora LZ – who I’ve followed on Facebook for a long time – and lifter and fitness model Sophie Arvebrink, who I previously didn’t know. Kevin said: I have never really seen female bodies portrayed in this way before. So, I sat down for a look – video above I included the movie poster for “Bad Boys” because this whole slow motion walking sequence, looking badass, comes out of

The Coconuts Bangkok translation and paraphrase: Woman: Oh, I’m sorry. This is a public venue. Aren’t you shameless, snuggling up to each other like that? Tom: So if you see farangs doing that, do you yell at them too? Woman: Then it’s the farangs’ business. Tom: So why do you discriminate? Woman: Well, they don’t do it on the BTS. I don’t discriminate. Thai tradition, you know. I warned you because I want the best for you. Rejecting the logic that only foreigners are off the hook and can do whatevs, the tom tells the woman to keep her lecturing

Earlier this week I watched “Pumping Iron II: The Women,” a counter-part of sorts to the Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Lou Ferrigno docu-drama from 1977, focusing on the 1975 IFBB Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia competitions. “Pumping Iron II: The Women” focuses on the 1983 Caesar’s World Cup, a competition that is staged for the film and introduces the Australian phenom Bev Francis, a former Power Lifter making her debut in the US female body building competition circuit. The drama and intrigue of the film is whether Francis’ other-worldly physique, which tips more toward male bodybuilders than the small, moderately muscular

This is something of a personal response review of Fight Like a Girl, written as a female fighter. Jill Morley’s film “Fight Like A Girl” opens with a bare-bulb lighting figures as they spar in a ring. Their white gloves and headgear swing and bob out of the darkness as a voice-over initiates the thesis of the film: people always want to know why female fighters want to fight. Throughout the rest of the documentary, Jill Morley points her camera at her training partners, her family and herself as they all shadowbox around that question. Nobody ever seems to hit

The Inherent Nature of Thai Clinch This video was shot about 25-30 minutes into a clinching session at the tail end of afternoon training. Initially, everyone jumped in to help Big with his clinch because he has some fights coming up, but by the time we get to this video everyone is working with “Godzilla,” who is significantly bigger than all the other boys and Den. They’re doing a “round robin” type drill with “last man standing” rules, so that two men are clinching and whoever gets thrown is “out” and whoever is still standing is still in, so the

I had lunch with Alicia Nowak yesterday, a young Polish woman who lives and trains Muay Thai in Vienna. We met through my Muay Thai Facebook page and I was surprised as we sat together across a table how easy it was to talk with her, to relate our experiences and struggles with training. It shouldn’t surprise me, as I honestly believe that no matter how different two people are who are training Muay Thai that a great deal of their experiences will be the same, but it was a delightful surprise. I mentioned – almost casually – that

One of the more limiting things as a female Muay Thai fighter is that we have no real history, no archived past to attach ourselves to, to anchor our passion and propel us to greater achievements. We have the names and photos of western women with lots of belts, in recent times, and very few videos, but reach beyond a decade or so and the record of female Muay Thai just falls off into mist. And in terms of Thai female fighters, anything prior to 1998 is extremely obscure and subject to the dubious or incomplete aspects of oral accounts.

(aired 4/23/2013 on Thai television – translation & subtitling is mine) Sud Suay Muay Thai I first became aware of this video the day after it aired on Channel 7 by a British woman who trains and fights in Bangkok sending me a link on my facebook page, letting me know that I’m in the commercial. The video had been uploaded to the fan page of another fighter in Bangkok, Jade Marrisa Sirisompan who is also featured in the video and has become the first featured fighter in what I understand to be something like a TV program called “Sud Suay Muay

About a year ago I wrote about the mixed blessing of attention that the World Muay Thai Angels show was bringing on female Muay Thai in Thailand: World Muay Thai Angels and the Benefit for Women. At the time, the tournament was brand new and is still to date the biggest production for an all-female tournament. As I said then, I was concerned that the new “sexy” image of Muay Thai was specifically aimed at erasing the observably pervasive among male Thais’ idea that only Toms or “butch” women fought Muay Thai. (For more on Toms and their counterparts, Dees,